Don't lose your head
by Quietlymischievous
Summary: "It's a head...a severed head!" There was something a little too familiar about this situation.


Forgive me, it just begged to be written.

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"Oh, fuck…" John stared in disbelief at the refrigerator's contents, then slammed the door and hung his head. No, no, no! This couldn't be happening. Maybe he should check again to make sure he hadn't been hallucinating. No, he was right, there was a human head in the fridge. "It's a head!" He tried to keep the panic out of his voice as he made himself say it again. "A severed head!"

"Just tea for me, thanks," Sherlock quipped sarcastically, further upsetting John's desperate grasp at control.

"No, there's a head in the fridge," John growled, panic giving way to anger. It wasn't the first time John had found body parts in their fridge. Mrs Hudson had adamantly refused to clean their refrigerator for a month after the mouldy spleen incident. It was at that point they had come to an agreement that Sherlock would keep his 'acquisitions' on the bottom shelf away from food, securely packaged and clearly labelled.

Up until today, Sherlock had kept to the guidelines. It wasn't that the head was sitting next to last night's dinner or that it was unpackaged that had John upset. This time was different in that he personally knew that particular head and he wanted to say -but knew he never could- 'Why is THIS head in our fridge?' If he did, Sherlock would certainly take that as an invitation to pry further into John's past and that was more than a bit not good.

"Yes," Sherlock replied calmly, unaware or uncaring of the extent of inner turmoil he was causing John.

"A bloody head!" John stomped through the kitchen and into the living room, fists clenched at his sides.

"Well, where else was I supposed to put it?" Sherlock said stroppily and turned his head to finally look at John. "You don't mind, do you?" Sherlock paused, probably for dramatic effect, the bloody git. "I got it from Bart's morgue."

John buried his face in one hand. Here it came, the moment when centuries of secrecy all came crashing into the open.

"I'm measuring the coagulation of saliva after death," Sherlock said as if John was an idiot for not realizing.

Oh, thank god! An experiment, not a case. The knot in John's stomach loosened somewhat at the thought that Sherlock wasn't looking to find the man's killer.

"I see you have written up the taxi driver case." Sherlock waved a hand in the air indicating the laptop close by.

John glanced back to the fridge once more for reassurance. "Uh, yes." He answered Sherlock automatically, hearing himself reply, but thinking of a darkened alleyway on the other side of London where steel clashed with steel and lightning flashed under a cloudless sky. He wondered what Sherlock would think if he knew that John knew it was Hugh Devereaux's head that resided in their fridge and that he also knew how Hugh's head had become separated from his body. John half-heartedly listened as Sherlock aired his offence at John's blog entry and compared his mind to a computer's hard drive. John let him prattle on, making what he hoped were appropriate rebuttals while he made a mental note to ask Molly to please stop giving Sherlock body parts to bring home. He knew that as an immortal he couldn't actually have a heart attack from finding the man he had just beheaded the evening before staring out at him from between the risotto and the marmalade, but he thought it might be a near thing.

"Put that in your blog. Or better still, stop inflicting your opinions on the world," Sherlock growled petulantly. "Where are you going?"

"Out, I need some air." The 'quickening' always left him restless and edgy. Unable to take Sherlock's madness any longer, John grabbed his jacket and his ornate walking stick and stormed out of the flat. He needed some time away. He set off at a brisk pace down Baker Street towards the nearest tube station. Surely, Sarah would let him stay the night if he told her what an arse Sherlock was being and if he was lucky, maybe he could get a leg over.

Hopefully, when he got back, Sherlock wouldn't be bored anymore. A bored Sherlock was a dangerous Sherlock. God help him if Sherlock ever figured out John's skill with a gun was nothing compared to his skill with a sword. He could only imagine the experiments that would ensue.

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In my own headcanon, John and Methos meet up once a year to have a pint and talk about old times. As always, your comments are greatly coveted.


End file.
